Triple Crown?

Babe Ruf did it again tonight. He hit a home run, his twentieth of the month, which broke Ryan Howard’s record for most homers at Reading. He now has 38 home runs to go with a .323 average and 103 RBI. If the season ended today (it ends Monday) he would win the league’s triple crown. This is extremely impressive. As we know, he is mainly a first baseman, so his path is blocked there. The experiment of playing left field hasn’t gone that great thus far.

I would really like to see him up in September, just to see what he could do against big-league pitchers. I am taking Ruf’s year with a grain of salt because it has come out of nowhere. As I’ve written before, he did not show this power before, even in college. However, it is not unprecedented for a player to put it together at some point in his career and have a dramatic improvement. I really don’t think we’ll see him in a Phillies uniform to start next year, though.